My Fair Lady

"Hey, does this look okay?" Jakob asked his mom. He spread his arms out and waited for Adrienne's inspection on his outfit. He was about to leave to go pick Chloe up and take her around town.

Adrienne looked over his outfit. "Well, yeah. Why? Where are you going?"

"Out." Jakob said as he leaned on the counter as Adrienne fixed a salad. "I'm obviously not missing a home cooking dinner."

"Jakob, you should know better than that." Adrienne scolded as she washed some lettuce. "You know we don't cook in this house. It's feed yourself night every night."

"I know." Jakob shot back as he popped a tomato piece into his mouth. "I gotta go."

"Be back before 11. School has started you know." Adrienne said as her youngest son took his keys off the counter.

"Sadly enough, yeah it has." Jakob muttered. "Where's Dad?" He noticed the calm of the room. When his father was around, calm was not an option.

"Upstairs. He's taking a shower after he got blasted with the neighbor's bug spray. He was so mad and he was swearing so much and it was so funny. He has declared war on them. This is going to be worth watching." Adrienne laughed at the memory of Billie Joe being sprayed without warning with toxic chemicals from their careless neighbor's spray gun.

"I'd bet." Jakob replied. "Well, I'm gone. Bye."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jakob wheeled rather dangerously and quickly into a petite paved driveway in a small campus neighborhood on the local community college campus. He checked his hair and face in the rearview mirror before he got out of his car and walked up the small steps leading to a porch.

He glanced at the pretty border of flowers around the house and noticed how well manicured the yard was. The only out of place things were a pile of moving boxes set aside the trash can at the end of the driveway. It was very picturesque and modest.

Jakob cleared his throat and knocked on the wooden part of the wood and glass door. He waited only for a few seconds, catching wafts of muffled conversations and footsteps before the door swung open to reveal Chloe, ready to go.

"Hey." She greeted him as she took her purse from the side table at the door. "Ready?"

"Yeah. I'm ready if you are." He followed her down the steps again. He wasn't expecting her to be ready when he got there. He had yet to meet a girl who was ready to go somewhere on time, his mother included. "You look great." He opened the door for Chloe to his car.

Chloe blushed slightly and tugged on her green skirt. "Thank you." She got in and Jakob shut the door firmly behind her. "So, uh, where are we going?" She asked as they spun out of her driveway and down the street.

"Well, I figured instead of just showing you where things were, we'd actually go there and hang out and stuff. My friend Frankito is going to meet us up and Lauren may somewhere and some others." Jakob explained as he drove with ease and confidence, his stance relaxed on the wheel.
"Frankito?" Chloe repeated. "His name's Frankito?"

"Yeah. Well, if you knew his dad, you'd understand. His dad's name is Frank but everyone calls him Tre' Cool."

"Very cool." Chloe murmured as she glanced out the window that was a blur of neon signs and cars.

"You know French?" Jakob looked at her.

Chloe he'sitated for a bit. "A little bit. Tre' Cool sounds familiar." She bit her lip in thought. "Wasn't he, like, in a band or something?"

Now it was Jakob's turn to he'sitate. He shifted a bit uncomfortably in his seat and took an exit before he responded. "Yeah. He was in a band with my dad. Green Day. Have you heard of them?"

"Yeah." Chloe breathed and grinned. "They were just inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame and we interpreted American Idiot into a musical a couple of years ago."

"Really? That's pretty awesome. Let me guess. You were 'Whatsername."

"Yeah." Chloe nodded. "It was really fun and really easy to write dialog between the characters. Wait, then your dad is Billie Joe Armstrong."

"Yeah." Jakob switched songs on the radio to give himself something to do besides look at Chloe at the moment. He wanted to break away from the 'Green Day's kid' mold he was set in. He was expected to be like Billie Joe, a slacker, a punk, a whatever you wanted to group him as.

"Cool." Chloe noticed the slight tension in Jakob's movements. "So, where are we going?"

"Divulge." Jakob latched onto the new subject with enthusiasm. "It's a little café that a lot of people meet at. That's where we're meeting Frankito."

Ten minutes later, Jakob parked his car in the Divulge parking lot and escorted Chloe inside the 1960s mod café. They took a seat across from a young guy with brown and purple hair in a black and white booth. "Hey Frankito." Jakob and Frankito took hands.

"Took you long enough. I was about to leave your ass and who is this?" Frankito took Chloe's hand and kissed the back of it, his eyes never leaving hers.

"I'm Chloe." She said as Frankito let go of her hands. She knew her cheeks were burning brightly. "I'm, um, Jakob's showing me around town."

"Really? I can do a better job." Frankito loudly whispered to her behind his hand.

"Shut up dick." Jakob said as he knocked Frankito's hand away. "Don't scare her. I'm her protector and no asshole will make her feel uncomfortable. Ain't that right Chloe?" He looked down at her.

"Sure." Chloe agreed.

Frankito grinned before he looked around and put a gray bowler hat on his head and averted his profile so nobody could see it clearly. "Shit. Ex-girlfriend at five o'clock."

"Who? Mary-chick?" Jakob looked around for the elusive girl Frankito dated so briefly, Frankito never learned her last name.

"No, yours. Katrina." Frankito nodded his head in the direction of the café bar not too far away.

Jakob's head swivelled to see his ex-girlfriend sitting with a group of guys, many of them Varsity jocks, laughing and having a good time. She and Jakob dated for over a year. They recently broke up over the summer. She claimed she needed some space.

Jakob was silent as he watched Katrina's golden hair swing about her shoulders as she laughed at something someone had said. Her perfectly straight and white teeth gleamed in the dim lighting of the café. He thought he had gotten over her, he was sure of it. This was the first time he had seen her since they broke up. She went to Europe for the summer and they didn't have any classes together in school.

Jakob took a deep breath. "You wanna go?" He asked Chloe, "There's better places than this to see." He nudged for her to move so they could get out. His tone wasn't as warm and confident as it was when they were coming to Divulge. Instead, it was chilly and monotonous.

"Uh, sure." Chloe scooted out of the booth so she, Jakob, and Frankito could leave the café quickly without being seen.